


Ripped at Every Edge

by ThoughtfulConstellations



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics), DCU (Movies)
Genre: Body Worship, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, New 52
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-05-01 20:09:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5219168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThoughtfulConstellations/pseuds/ThoughtfulConstellations
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce can’t remember a thing about his life before, but he’s pretty sure he’s never experienced anything more rewarding or more beautiful than naked Julie Madison spread out beneath him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ripped at Every Edge

**Author's Note:**

> There isn't any Bruce x Julie fic out there, so I thought I might try to change that.
> 
> This little piece takes place sometime before Batman #46 =)
> 
> I'm still updating Arrest My Soul, my Dick x Barbara fic, so if you read this and enjoyed it, and Dick/Barbara is one of your ships, feel free to check in with me while I finish up on that fic!
> 
> Recommended listening:  
> "Give Me Strength" - Snow Patrol
> 
> Please let me know what you think! I'm a total sucker for kudos + comments!
> 
> Enjoy! =)

“You’re a work of art,” Bruce murmurs from between Julie’s legs, his voice a little raw from all the use it’s gotten from his chosen activity of the last hour. Julie’s hand swipes through his hair, and when she comes down enough to regain control of her senses again, she lets out a low laugh, weak and breathy.

“Stop with the tattoo jokes,” she says.  To make his point clear, Bruce starts kissing his way back up her body, and he pauses at every colorful patch of ink he finds.  As he presses his lips against Julie’s warm skin, she makes a soft sound and flexes underneath his mouth, underneath his hands. Bruce can’t remember a thing about his life before, but he’s pretty sure he’s never experienced anything more rewarding or more beautiful than naked Julie Madison spread out beneath him.

“I mean it,” he replies after taking a brief detour around the area of her ribcage to give her star tattoos some attention. “You’re a work of art. Look at you.”

“I’m looking.” She keeps threading her fingers through Bruce’s thick black hair. “And I see you taking your time with every single one of my tattoos, which I’ll remind you, you’ve _definitely_ seen before.”

“I don’t just mean physically, though…” Bruce moves his head to kiss a bright burst of blue on her forearm. “I wouldn’t be wrong on that. And I’m not.  You’re a gorgeous work of art.  All these tattoos lining you…” He gets lost for a second, and then he pulls himself back as he kisses his way back up her sternum. “But you, Julie Madison.  The _heart_ of you.  That’s a work of art.”

Julie lifts her knees up and adjusts her body beneath him so she can cradle him against her better.  Slowly, she runs her hands over his hair and his face, along his jaw and down his neck to his shoulders.  As an artist, she has an eye for what is aesthetically pleasing, whether she’s looking at a painting, a sketch, or a person.  From the moment she first saw Bruce Wayne, she’d noticed how symmetrical and pleasing his face was to look at, how deep the blue of his eyes were.  She’s always known that he was a sight to behold, but now as she looks at him, it’s like she’s seeing it all over again for the first time.

He’s stretched out above her, naked and glorious, and even though she can’t see the entire length of his body, she sees enough scars to feel a sharp pang in her chest.  The first time they’d had sex, her eyes had gone straight to those physical marks across his torso, and he’d paused, following her gaze.

“I don’t know where I got these from,” he’d said, his voice curious and thoughtful. “But I hope whatever I was doing at the time made them worth it.”

Julie doesn’t mind his scars.  In fact, she loves them.  She thinks these markings, so frequent and so expansive, are beautiful because they map out his life story.  What that life story is, she doesn’t know, and neither does he, but in a way, she finds that ambiguity beautiful.  Keeping her touch feather light, she traces her fingertips over the closest scar on his shoulder, and she smiles. “You’re one to talk about someone being art.”

“Hmm?” he asks, distracted by the taste of her collarbone against his tongue. It’s so _Bruce_ that Julie can’t help but smile even wider.  When he hears she’s silent, he pauses and looks up at her. “Hmm? Sorry. Busy.”

“I can see that,” she says, and she pulls him in for a quick kiss. “I was just saying that you of all people shouldn’t be talking about a person being a work of art.”

“Why?” he asks.  She can tell she’s caught his interest by the way he adjusts himself.  He rests his weight onto his elbows and looks at her expectantly. There’s something in the way he looks at her, like he’s waiting for something but just _knows_ she’s going to tell him.  Bruce does everything with this underlying edge of confidence to it, but even then, confidence isn’t the right word.  For someone who doesn’t remember who he is or what his past has been threaded together with, he has an unbelievable amount of whatever this part that’s so _Bruce_ is made up of.

Julie’s sky blue eyes flick down to the spot on his shoulder that she’s tracing, and he looks over to see her fingernail skating over his skin. A smile flickers over his mouth, and he takes a moment to kiss the side of her hand as best as he can from this angle. His beard is soft and doesn’t hurt as it brushes over the sensitive skin of Julie’s hand, and she’s reminded again of just how soft parts of him can be.  His whole body is designed of hard angles, hard lines, and hard muscles. He’s rough and rugged, almost to the point where the scars and the crooked angles in his fingers and along his nose are borderline concerning.

“That’s considerate of you,” he says, understanding what she’d meant by calling him art.

“You don’t seem to be all that bothered by them,” she observes. Bruce blinks a couple times, and then he looks back at her hand as she moves it to trace another scar on his bicep.

“I’m not,” he admits, as if realizing it for the first time. “I don’t know why. I thought I would be. I thought I’d be bothered by the fact that I’ve apparently been through a blender but don’t remember it, but…” His voice trails off as he looks back up at Julie, directly into her eyes. “I’m not. At least not anymore. I think there’ll be things I won’t ever understand about who I was before, and this’ll just have to be one of them.”

“You’re so at peace with that,” Julie murmurs, and she brings her hand to his mouth to trace along his bottom lip.  He doesn’t have any scars there, but she just wants to touch his mouth, to feel the soft hair of his dark beard that she’s watched grow out over the past few months.

“Must be all those yoga classes you make me go to,” he jokes, and she smiles, rolling her eyes as she does so.

“Please. I don’t _make_ you do anything, Bruce,” she replies. “Besides, you’re very good at it.  It’s like you’ve done it before.”

“Maybe.” He shrugs, his eyes flicking over to some of the scars on his arms again. “You never know.  The Bruce Wayne I was before was known for doing anything and everything under the sun. That’s how I figure I got these scars, and hey, after some of the yoga styles we’ve tried, it wouldn’t surprise me if yoga was how I got half of these.”

“Stop!” she exclaims, but she’s laughing out loud now.  Bruce smiles up at her, his grin wolfish, and he leans forward to kiss along her collarbone and up her neck until he’s at her ear. Breathing gently, he buries his face into her bright red hair, and he closes his eyes as he takes a moment just to hold her now.

“I meant what I said before,” he says softly. “About you being a work of art. Before you laughed at me and so rudely accused me of making tattoo jokes.”

Feeling Bruce so close and so vulnerable like this makes Julie melt, and she shifts to where she can wrap her arms around his back, pulling him closer. She closes her eyes, too, and she turns her face in towards his just a little bit. “And I meant what I said, too.”

“Jules.” Bruce pulls back now to look at her, needing to make eye contact with her. “You’re such a good person.  Not only are your tattoos stunning…your face…your body…your hair…it’s your heart. It doesn’t surprise me that I knew you and loved you in high school because if you were anything like the woman you are today…”

Julie notices that he says “loved,” and she isn’t sure if she should push it or not, so she just looks at him.  Silent, she lifts a hand and places the back of her knuckles against his cheek. He’s so large, so gruff and encompassing, but when she has him naked and pressed against her own bared body, it’s amazing to watch such a large man turn so soft at her touch.

“I guess I’m pretty cool,” she says, still gently teasing him. “But you…you’ve got a heart of art, too.  And I did mean it when I said it earlier.  You’re really great with kids, Bruce.  The kids at the center just adore you, and you’re so fantastic with them. Honestly, I don’t know how I could have continued running the center if you hadn’t stepped in to help when you did.  And I’ll always be thankful for that.  For you.”

Bruce’s face goes still for a few moments as he looks at her, processing everything she’s said.  And then when he speaks, his voice is soft. “I love you.”

Julie blinks a couple times, and she tilts her head to the side a bit, looking up at him in surprise. “What?”

She doesn’t know why she’s _that_ surprised. She’s expected it for a few weeks now. After all the time they’ve spent together, all the talks they’ve had where she’s helped him try to piece together memories of his past…she’s figured it was only a matter of time before he said it. She just hadn’t expected him to tell her naked in bed after a long rigorous hour of sexual activity.

“I love you,” Bruce repeats.  He doesn’t shy away from it or stumble over his words; he doesn’t even look embarrassed or afraid she won’t say it back.  He just lays it out there and lets it sit between them, and it’s up to her what they do next with it.  Quietly, she puts her hand back on his cheek and strokes his face.  Even beneath the facial hair and the added lines that come hand in hand with the stresses of adulthood, she can still see the face of the high school boy she’d come to adore in her teenage years.

“I know,” she says, her voice soft, adoring.  Bruce smiles, and he catches her hand with one of his. Carefully, he presses his lips to the inside of her wrist and kisses her skin there.

“I’ve loved you for a while,” he admits. “You’re just…the only thing that makes sense.  The only chance I’ve felt comfortable taking since this whole situation with my memory has come up.” He kisses her palm this time. “But I think you knew that, too.”

“I did,” she says, her tone just hinting at sheepish.

“But…?” Bruce senses hesitation, and he looks curiously at her. And as Julie looks back, she sees a flash of nervousness and potential insecurity.

“What if your memory comes back?” she asks.  She doesn’t really want to broach this topic, but she knows she needs to.  Before she truly commits to whatever this thing with Bruce is, she needs to have some kind of reassurance. “What happens if you remember who you were?”

“Are you worried that that’ll affect my feelings for you?” Bruce’s eyebrows draw together, and he looks so much like a confused puppy that Julie nearly laughs.  Bruce Wayne is a large man all over, and to see him looking so young and small in his facial expression is amusing to her.

“I…I don’t know.”

Bruce’s thumb lightly traces shapes on the inside of her wrist, shapes he isn’t paying attention to, nor is she, but she notices that it feels good to have his rough fingers touch her so sweetly. “I can’t imagine anything affecting how I feel about you.  If I remember who Bruce Wayne used to be… _if_ I remember…I’ll have you.  I’ll have my memories from before, but I’ll also have my memories of us now, and I can’t see myself giving up how you make me feel.”

Julie inhales slowly, and then she holds her breath as she smiles up at him. God, he’s so beautiful. She can’t look at him and find anything less than _stunning_ painted across his face.  Even if she didn’t have that eye for finding things that are aesthetically pleasing, she knows she’d still look at him and see nothing but a beautiful heart inside a beautiful man. She puts both hands on his face and pulls him down to kiss her.  His mouth is hot when it claims her, but she doesn’t mind.  She likes him like this.

Bruce kisses her deeply and with all the fire that she knows lurks inside his body, and it’s only a matter of seconds before he’s whispering, “Jules…Julie…please.”  It’s only a matter of seconds before he’s got her legs up on his shoulders, and he’s pushing inside her, his eyes closing and his face going slack. He’s slow as he moves into her, and she knows it’s because he’s giving her time to adjust to his size before he gets to really fucking her.

This time the sex is slow.  Gentle. He moves with intent, with purpose, but he doesn’t fuck into her like he’s going to die if he doesn’t feel her come. They move together, Bruce adjusting from time to time and Julie adjusting with him.  Bruce presses as close to Julie as he physically can, his whole body arching and thrusting like he can’t possibly get close enough, and Julie presses back.  She moans softly in his ear and whispers words that make sense now but won’t later; she whispers a litany of promises that could be tattooed as art over Bruce’s scars.

When she comes, her grip on his hair tightens until it’s painful. She whimpers his name, and her body bows beneath his.  Pressing her lips to his temple, she gasps and rocks with Bruce as he buries his face into her neck, coming inside her with a low moan and a hard thrust of his hips. Julie closes her eyes. She closes her eyes, and she drapes her arms around his shoulders as he releases her legs from his shoulders.

“Jules,” he murmurs.

“Bruce,” she says back into his hair.  He’s got his face still pressed into her neck, and she just takes a few moments to stroke his hair and his shoulders.  Her fingers ghost over more scars—it’s like she finds new ones every time she sees him naked.  God, what she wouldn’t do for a full weekend locked away from the world just so she could examine him and look at each of his scars—and she traces each one.

After a few quiet moments, Bruce pulls back to look at her. His eyes have that glassy, starry look in them, a look she loves, and he gazes at her like he’s never seen anything more breathtaking.  Silently, he leans forward and kisses her on the mouth.  The kiss is surprisingly chaste, but Julie doesn’t mind.  She just melts back into the kiss and reminds herself to breathe through it.

“I still stand by it, you know,” Bruce mumbles in between kisses.

“Hmm?” she asks.  Admittedly, she’s not too wrapped up in what he’s saying, but she pauses now to check in with him. Bruce smiles, slow and beautiful, and then he kisses the blue swirls on her forearm.

“You’re a masterpiece.”

Julie puts her hand over a particularly large scar near his heart, and she looks him in the eye so he understands.  He places his hand on top of hers, and for a few moments, they lie still together, quiet and content.  They make an interesting contrast to each other, Julie notices.  Bruce is so thick and built, all hardness, and she’s anything _but_.  Sure, she’s toned, but her body is molded together with soft curves, lines that ebb and flow and connect together with such fluidity it’s hard to pinpoint where she begins and ends.

“Bruce,” she says after a few moments in silence.

“Hmm?” he asks, bringing his eyes to her face now as he pulls them away from where he’d been staring at a potential hickey he’d given her on her neck.

“I love you,” she says finally.  Her voice is so soft she’s not even sure Bruce has heard it until she sees his pupils grow wider. “I love you, too.”

Bruce takes a couple seconds just to look at her, but then that slow smile she loves is back on his face. “So you believe me?  That if I get my memory back…it won’t change a damn thing about how I feel about you?  No matter who I was before?”

Julie can’t _not_ smile when he looks at her like that, and she nods. “I do.  I believe you.  And I love you.”

Bruce kisses her again, this time not so chastely but still maintaining all the sweetness. “I promise, Jules.  God…I promise.  I love you.”

As he wraps his arms around her, holding her close to him, Julie once again sees how they physically look together, how his skin looks against hers. With his scars and her tattoos, his hardness and her softness, they’re like a painting in and of themselves.

“I love you,” she whispers, repeating the words again as she keeps her eyes open to look at their bodies together. Softly, she gives a little laugh. “Make love, not war.”

“Make art, not war,” he adds, and she can feel his smile against her hair. God, he loves her red hair.

“Love…art…same difference.”

“Is it?” Bruce asks playfully, his voice still muffled.  Julie’s eyes trail down to another scar across the back of his shoulder, and she holds him tighter.  For her, love and art can mean Bruce Wayne, and so for her, they’re the same. 

“Of course,” she replies.

 _Of course_ , she thinks in her head, her gaze still focused on the both of them together. _Because they both mean you._


End file.
